Steele speaks on the idea of letting computer languages evolve, much as spoken languages do over time. The early concept of designing specific language structures with little room for adaptations worked for small computing communities, but not for today's worldwide communities. Steel suggests a combination of social and technical engineering is necessary for today's programming language designs.

Recorded during the 1998 OOPSLA Conference (Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications), sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM/SIGPLAN).

Resumo:

Steele speaks on the idea of letting computer languages evolve, much as spoken languages do over time. The early concept of designing specific language structures with little room for adaptations worked for small computing communities, but not for today's worldwide communities. Steel suggests a combination of social and technical engineering is necessary for today's programming language designs.